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The Threat to British Curry

By Huma Yusuf November 29, 2013 8:50 amNovember 29, 2013 8:50 am

Photo

British Prime Minister David Cameron being shown around the kitchen at the British Curry Awards.Credit Sang Tan/Associated Press

LONDON — Upon first moving here from Pakistan two years ago, I was inundated with restaurant recommendations: Tayyabs and Lahore Kebab House, Daawat and Brilliant. I spent many weekends sampling curries and kebabs in the east and halwa in the south. In the end, I settled on a Drummond Street standby.

For members of the South Asian diaspora, having a favorite curry restaurant is like belonging to a tribe: It requires absolute loyalty and the occasional sacrificial ritual, like waiting in line for a table for two hours in cold, wet weather.

But the appeal extends far beyond homesick immigrants. London now has more curry shops than Mumbai. Across Britain, some 10,000 restaurants and takeout joints serve kormas, vindaloos and other variants.

At the British Curry Awards this week more than 40,000 nominations poured in from fans. (Among the winners, Karma, in Whitburn, for Best Spice Restaurant Scotland, and Shampan 4 at the Spinning Wheel, in Westerham, Kent, for Best Newcomer.) Prime Minister David Cameron took the stage between choreographed dance sequences and declared the foreign dish now central to British identity: “To all those who think being British depends on your skin color, wake up and smell the curry!”

But now curry is under threat, both from the state and the market.

Cameron’s favorite curry house in Oxfordshire was raided by border officials last month, and three Bangladeshis suspected of immigration infractions were arrested. Stringent laws have made it nearly impossible for restaurants to bring chefs from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, creating a shortfall of qualified talent.

Acknowledging the scale of the problem at the curry awards ceremony, the prime minister pledged to help: “So let me promise you this: We will work through this together. We’ll continue to help you get the skilled Asian chefs you need.”

It’s not just a visa issue, though. The immigrant communities that have long dominated the business are evolving. As young Britons of South Asian origin become more affluent and better educated, they aspire to middle-class professions. They feel their hard-won skills would be wasted in family-run curry kitchens.

The government has tried to address this problem by funding a scheme to bring unemployed British youths from outside the South Asian community into Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani kitchens. But more than a year after these so-called curry colleges were started, enrollment rates remain low.

That’s partly because of the stigma attached to working in the industry. And it’s partly because South Asian restaurateurs have been reluctant to hire white Britons, preferring to maintain the authenticity of the menu by hiring chefs from their countries of origin.

As a waiter at my local curry house put it, “You have to know how it tastes before you can cook it.” And as far as he’s concerned, you can’t know how it tastes unless you were born eating it.

In more ways than one, Britain’s curry crisis says more about the country’s prejudices than its palate.

A version of this article appears in print on 12/01/2013, on page SR8 of the NewYork edition with the headline: The British Threat To Curry.